The take-home of this study is that inhibition in this pathway is coming from an unusual co-release of neurotransmitters into the habenula," Shabel said.

Our study suggests that one of the ways in which serotonin alleviates depression is by rebalancing the brain's processing of negative life events vis--vis the balance of glutamate and GABA in the habenula," Shabel said.

The research has shown that the habenula got activated in response to pictures associated with painful electric shocks, with the opposite occurring for pictures that predicted winning money.

Senior author, Dr Jonathan Roiser of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said that the habenula didn't just express whether something led to negative events or not, it signaled quite how much bad outcomes were expected.

Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine provides evidence that inhibition of this particular brain region - the lateral habenula - using implanted electrodes can reverse certain behaviors associated with depression, and also provides a mechanism to explain this effect.

The team of scientists, led by Suresh Jesuthasan from the Agency of Science, Technology and Research/Duke-NUS Neuroscience Research Partnership, showed that disrupting a specific set of neurons in the habenula prevents normal response to stressful situations.

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